


Without Armour

by LittleIvy



Category: Six of Crows Series - Leigh Bardugo
Genre: Angst, Asexuality, F/M, First Kiss, Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault, Jealous Kaz, Light BDSM, Mutilation, Mutual Pining, Non-Explicit Sex, Post-Canon, Revenge, Torture, Touch-Starved, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-31
Updated: 2021-02-09
Packaged: 2021-03-06 22:07:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 13,715
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26206150
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleIvy/pseuds/LittleIvy
Summary: Two of the deadliest people in the Barrel learn to touch each other without keeling over.
Relationships: Kaz Brekker/Inej Ghafa
Comments: 39
Kudos: 288
Collections: Kaz and Inej Fanfics





	1. Inej

Oh, how she missed this. Inej bounded across the gables, her rubber-soled feet finding familiar gaps in the tiles, and found her wings again. Ketterdam sprawled around her, a bleak and dirty scar on the landscape. She breathed in its acrid coal smoke scent and knew she was home. 

She paused beside a crooked chimney and looked back the way she had come. Berth-twenty two was far in the distance, now, but she could still see the  _ Wraith’s  _ sails against the briny haze on the horizon. Dawn limped closer, dragging pale light with it. Not that she needed daylight to see by. East Stave never slept—laughter floated up to her on the rooftops, carrying with it the scent of gold and desperation, and squares of light spilled onto the cobblestones from the taverns and gambling halls lining the street. 

Inej left the bright lights behind, scaling a steeply gabled roof to perch on its peak. From there, she had a view of the whole city. It had been six months, but her well-trodden routes lit up in her mind’s eye. She knew the fastest ways to the Exchange by roof, street, or canal. No one could move through Ketterdam as quickly as her—that’s what had made her so valuable. 

A spark of anxiety that had nothing to do with the altitude shot through her. Would Kaz have replaced her by now? She’d avoided thinking about it, all those months at sea. Avoided thinking about  _ him.  _ About that last day, standing by the sea with their bare fingers entwined.  _ I think you’re worth saving.  _ She put it out of her mind.

Even though it was dark, she fancied she could pick out an ugly, precariously leaning building from the dozens of others just like it in the Barrel. 

The Slat. 

She’d been away for too long. Things were bound to have changed. Inej touched each of her knives for comfort before sliding down the roof and making her way closer.

Whatever she’d expected to find when she arrived at the Slat, it was not Kaz Brekker feeding the crows outside his window. She crouched behind a chimney stack and watched him between the broken chimney pots, careful to keep to the shadows. They loomed longer now that the sun was just managing to peek through the low-lying plumes of smog.

He looked exactly as she remembered him, right down to the cut of his hair. It was trimmed mercilessly short on the sides, so close to the skin she could see faint scars on his scalp. Some were pink and new, others pale silver with age. She had been with him on most of those jobs; patched him afterwards, whenever he allowed it. Had anyone been tending his wounds while she was gone? The thought made her stomach drop.  _ It shouldn’t _ , she scolded herself. Kaz may have bought her a ship, and met her parents, and held her hand, and fought and killed and bled to save her, but that didn’t mean there was anything between them.

Kaz tossed a handful of breadcrumbs onto the windowsill. He seemed moody about it, like he was performing the task at great cost, but Inej could see his lips moving as he talked to the crows. For a split second, his black eyes darted right to her hiding place. She held her breath, certain that he’d seen her, but he turned away from the window without saying anything. 

A cool breeze ruffled the loose hairs at the nape of her neck and roused gooseflesh on her arms. It was too cold at this time of morning, but Kaz left the window wide open. How often had she come this exact same way, to perch on this windowsill feeding the crows or slip unnoticed into her room one floor below when she didn’t care to speak to anyone after a job? She could have mapped the soot-stained bricks with her eyes closed. Inej slunk closer and hoisted herself up onto the windowsill. She didn’t make a sound; even the crows were silent, hopping out of her way when she slipped through the window and landed lightly on the other side.

The room had changed. It was more bedroom than office, though if Inej didn’t know how to look for the signs of Kaz in the spare set of gloves on the nightstand and neatly folded cloth by the washbasin, she would have thought the place uninhabited for all the personal objects he kept there. Kaz sat behind the makeshift desk and scratched away in his ledger book. He didn’t pause or look up, even when Inej walked right up to the edge of the desk.

Typical Kaz. Inej knew she shouldn’t expect a welcoming party on the docks or a lavish gift, but she at least thought he would look at her. She hadn’t seen him for half a year, and now she wondered why she missed him at all. He didn’t even need to write any figures down—they would all be committed to memory with the barest glance. She folded her arms and looked around the office. 

The filing cabinets were gone, giving the room a less cramped appearance, and the desk was practically bare save for an oil lamp, the ledger, and a pot of ink.

Without looking up, Kaz dipped his pen in the inkwell and said, “I moved into Per Haskell’s old office downstairs, if that’s what you’re wondering.”

It wasn’t, but it made sense. You couldn’t be the most feared Barrel boss working off of a broken warehouse door propped up on a couple of fruit crates. Inej stared at this boy she thought she knew so well. He looked the same, he sounded the same, but how much had he changed while she was gone? It felt like they were strangers again.

Eventually, Kaz put his pen down and looked at her.

“Did you miss me, Wraith?” he asked, slowly peeling off his gloves and setting them beside the ledger. Inej kept her features expressionless as she watched him expose his pale, trickster hands.

“I don’t go by that name anymore.”

Kaz stared at her, his bitter coffee eyes revealing nothing. Then he inclined his head and gestured to one of the rickety stools, cordial as a mercher inviting his client to a meeting.

“Inej,” he said. A tiny smile appeared at the corner of his mouth, there and gone so quickly she must have imagined it. “Have a seat.”

She remained standing. “Did you miss me, Kaz?”

He adjusted his cuffs, brushed invisible lint from his sleeves, picked up the pen and flicked it between his slender fingers. “Jesper certainly wouldn’t shut up about you.”

It wasn’t an answer. She always knew this might happen, that she’d return and find Kaz with his armour as impenetrable as ever. Cold and calculating, the burr of his voice impossibly rough. She’d been expecting it, but  _ Saints,  _ that didn’t make the pain in her chest any less keen.

She took a moment to compose herself. “I will go see him, then.”

Kaz caught her wrist when she turned to go. Her heart leapt into her throat. Could he feel her pulse hammering under his bare fingers? Inej looked at the desk between them, pushing the fluttering hope in her chest down deep. She waited for the snide remark, for him to drop her hand and let her walk away.

Instead, he circled the desk until they were standing toe to toe. He let his fingers slide from her wrist, pressing his clammy palm against her own. Inej closed her eyes. She remembered his lips, how soft they were as they brushed across the sensitive juncture between her neck and shoulder.  _ Maybe we could try again.  _ She found herself looking at his mouth when she opened her eyes.

“Before you left…" Kaz said, "you wanted my help hunting slavers. On the seas and in the city, that’s what you said.” His throat bobbed. “I’ve shut down the worst of the brothels, cut slavers’ legs out from under them before they make it back to their ships. I saved Tante Heleen for you.”

A violent shudder went through her. Kaz squeezed her hand so tightly, she could feel his fingers trembling. She hated that a name held such power over her. With every slaver she had brought down on the True Sea, she had felt Tante Heleen’s grip loosen. Knowing the Peacock was still procuring girls and treating them the way she had treated Inej made bile rise in her throat.

“I thought the Menagerie was quarantined.” She hated how small her voice was.

“It was—is.” His thumb skated over the back of her hand. She met his eyes and found them dilated, pupils blown wide like a shark’s. “The House of Exotics is a travelling brothel now, moving from place to place on West Stave.”

Her gaze dropped to his lips again. She swallowed hard, feeling the solid warmth of his hand, and said, “Will you help me bring her down?”

“I thought you’d never ask.” His grin sent a jolt of electricity racing through her veins. 

They were standing so close. His smile slipped until he was just staring at her, his dark eyes flitting over her face like they didn’t know where to land. She prepared herself for when he would violently pull away, like in the hotel bathroom, but he only leaned closer until they were sharing air. Inej closed her eyes. She would be content to stand like this in silence, letting the small connection of their clasped hands speak the words left unsaid.

His nose bumped against hers. Her heart thudded painfully in her chest, so loud she thought he must have heard it. Any moment now, he would lurch backwards, push her away. She held her breath and memorised the glow of heat from his face so close to her own. He took a shuddering breath and she knew it was over, but then he tilted his head, their noses brushing, and slanted his lips across hers.

The kiss was close-lipped and chaste, but Inej still wondered which of them would keel over first. She gripped his sleeves to keep herself upright. Shock melted into desire that curled low in her belly, and she rose on her tiptoes, pushing herself closer. She had always secretly suspected Kaz would be a clean kisser, his every action laced with precision, and it turned out she was right. 

She laid her hand on his cheek and he froze, every part of him going tense. Inej broke the kiss and looked up at him. His eyes were closed, brows drawn together in a pained frown. She kept cupping his face, her fluttering pulse growing weaker. Now he would push her away. She steeled herself for it, already biting back the tears. 

His hands were on her hips, fingers pressing into her skin through the fabric. He breathed shallowly through his nose, eyes still closed, jaw working as he ground his molars. Inej waited, keeping a firm grip on the hope flickering to life in her ribcage.

He leaned in again too quickly. Their teeth clashed, but Inej didn’t care. She let the hope unfurl and spread heat to the tips of her toes. Kaz pulled her closer, slowly turning them until the desk hit the backs of her thighs. He gently lifted her up onto the edge and stood between her knees, kissing her until her head spun. Inej wanted this—had dreamt of it for a while, holding it close to her chest during the lonely nights at sea—but she couldn’t stave off the noxious scent of vanilla that slammed into her when Kaz swept his tongue across her bottom lip.

She snatched her face away, holding Kaz at arm’s length with a hand on his shoulder. The Ravkan man was there in the room with them, skating his hands across Inej’s flesh, pinning her down, peeling away parts of her until she was a fragile husk of who she had once been. Disgust roiled in the pit of her stomach.

It may have been seconds or hours, but finally the vanilla scent faded and Kaz was there. His lips were swollen, hair tousled, dark eyes wide and frightened. 

“Did I hurt you?”

She shook her head. His mouth twisted like he didn’t believe her and her heart cracked a little. Anger bubbled up where disgust had been, blazing through her until her ears were ringing. She wouldn’t let that man, or Tante Heleen, or  _ anyone _ take her apart and leave her a broken thing in Kaz’s arms. She surged forwards and kissed him again, pouring all her hurt and pain into the way her tongue moved against his.

He was wooden, barely responsive, but his hands were gentle when he pushed her away.

“I don’t know what happened at the Menagerie.” He swept a strand of hair behind her ear, the touch so soft and intimate it made her eyes prickle. “I don’t know, and you don’t have to tell me, but I can imagine.”

She had begun to tell him in the hotel bathroom. The words had come haltingly, and it was only when she said them out loud that she realised how difficult it was to express all that had happened to her. Could she tell Kaz? She examined his face; the sharp jaw, the bitter coffee eyes that look so earnest in that moment. She trusted him with her life.

So she told him everything.

Throughout, he sat silently beside her on the desk, brushing his fingers against hers whenever her voice caught and she had to clear a lump in her throat to go on. When she was finished, she turned to find his eyes incandescent with rage. 

He spoke in such a low growl she could scarcely understand him. “I will hunt down every son of a bitch who ever walked into the Menagerie and asked for the Suli lynx. They can only feel a fraction of the pain and helplessness they caused, but I will make them hurt. I will make them pray for death for days before I give it to them.”

Inej shivered. She knew he would. He’d killed Oomen and every single Black Tip that had cornered her on those crates like an animal. The thought made her cold, but if she was honest with herself, it filled her with dark pleasure, too. Saints forgive her; she wanted to help Kaz do it.

She nodded, and knew from his razor-sharp smile that nothing could stop him now, not even her.

They hunted for the better part of a year. Inej had never seen Kaz so dogged, pursuing scraps of perfumed receipts from every hidey-hole on West Stave, burning oil every night until dawn. Rich men visited the Menagerie, men with the sort of gold that demanded discretion, and Tante Heleen provided it. Finding clients from days, let alone years ago proved to be a near-impossible task.

Not for Kaz Brekker. 

He slid a paper across to her. They were in his property on the Lid, huddled in overstuffed armchairs over a coffee table. Inej lifted her steaming cup to her lips and drank without tasting anything.

“I found three more.” Underlit by the lamp, Kaz’s eyes looked sunken. “None of them are in Kerch.”

The unspoken eventuality that Inej would take to the seas again lingered between them like a sour miasma. She dropped her eyes to the table. His bare fingers shuffled a stack of papers, sifting one to the bottom with a deft slide of his palm. If Inej hadn’t watched those same hands dozens of times in the gambling halls, she might have missed it.

“You’re keeping something from me.”

She was used to being on the outskirts of his plans; aware of every fact and minute detail, but somehow missing the pieces that made the picture whole. Those pieces belonged to Kaz alone, kept safe in his brilliant, dangerous mind until he deigned to enlighten everyone else. Inej wasn’t expecting the sharp pain in her chest.  _ The heart is an arrow,  _ but his constant ducking and deflecting made it incredibly difficult for her to aim true. Had things not changed? After everything, why was he still locking her out?

Kaz slowly withdrew the paper. It was nothing special, just another House of Exotics receipt dyed pale pink, but Inej’s pulse quickened. She wanted to know what Kaz had found. She wanted to burn every receipt and pretend they had never started searching.

“I found the Ravkan man two days ago.”

Her heart stopped. Then it beat again, frantic and uneven.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” She palmed Sankta Alina. Kaz tracked the movement before his eyes found hers again. Their onyx depths held nothing, not a flicker of emotion or sign of weakness. “You should have told me! No more secrets, Kaz!”

Inej vaulted the table and snatched for the paper, but it disappeared with the barest curl of his fingers.

“Give it to me.” Her blood thundered in her ears. She warred against the part of herself screaming to pin Kaz to the chair by his throat and search every one of his false pockets until she found it. With jerky movements, she slid her knife into its sheath. “Give it to me, now.”

Even sitting down, Kaz managed to stare down his nose at her. “Sit down,” he said icily.

Damn him. Damn him with his cold, penetrating gaze that made her quail despite her rage. He stared and stared at her, unflinching, until she walked stiffly back to her chair.

“You will only have one chance.” Kaz produced the paper with a flick of his wrist, but held it close to his chest when Inej jerked forwards. “ _ One chance.  _ If he leaves Kerch, there is no other trail, nothing for me to follow. Do you understand?”

Inej heard only one thing.  _ He’s in Kerch.  _ Sweat prickled along her spine, clinging to the fabric of her shirt. After all this time, he was so close. She closed her eyes.  _ Saints, protect me. _

_ No. Protect  _ him. “Tell me his name.”

“Are you calm?”

“Tell me his name _ ,  _ Kaz.”

He did. Inej thought knowing the man’s name would make her hesitate, but any mercy she may have possessed had been purged from her at the Menagerie. She took a deep breath through her nose. When she exhaled, her heart was as cold and hard as the blade she would use to slit Toma Ilin’s throat.


	2. Kaz

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW for genital mutilation and minor non-con (neither against Kaz or Inej).
> 
> Comments breathe life into me, so let me know what you think! Open to constructive criticism ^.^

Kaz limped along the brothel’s landing, his cane thunking with every step. The winter chill had seeped into his bad leg during the carriage ride from Ketterdam, turning the dull throb into a splintering ache that spiked every time he moved. He’d barely been able to crawl through the window; Inej had had to haul him in by the back of his coat.

With anyone else, he might have been humiliated. Not with her.

Inej trailed silently beside him, little more than a ghost in the darkness. Her shoulder brushed his and he caught a faint whiff of cardamom. Were she still the Wraith, she wouldn’t be wearing fragrances. Too easy for dogs and men with keen noses to sniff out. Wraiths didn’t leave signatures, and they didn’t get caught. But she wasn’t his Wraith anymore.  _ What is she, then?  _

Kaz looked at her sidelong. Inej’s hair gleamed under the red lamplight, coiled at the nape of her neck like always. In his hoarded fantasies, she wore her hair unbound, and he ran the silken strands between his bare fingers while she whispered his name into the shell of his ear. 

A shiver rippled through him. Her lips had been so soft; soft enough to stave off the rush of cold water into his lungs. The sick need to flee had lingered just beneath his skin but he’d ignored it, chasing the longing like a glowing beacon.  _ Inej, Inej, Inej.  _

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Kaz paused outside the door, hand poised on the handle. 

Inej already had a knife in her hand. She nodded. Kaz let the door swing open on silent hinges, spilling sounds into the hallway.

Deep, male grunts. A squeaking bed frame. The wet slap of flesh on flesh.

A red haze descended on his vision. Toma Ilin had a Suli girl pinned under him, one meaty hand holding her in place by the throat, the other balled in a tangle of purple silk. The girl’s face was blank, eyes open but unseeing. That had been Inej. The thought rasped against his jagged edges, throwing up sparks, threatening to engulf the room in his red-hot fury.

Inej slipped past him. She padded to a vase of roses, each step perfectly balanced, a blade made flesh and blood. Kaz shoved the mad, jittering beast inside him into a tiny cage. It was still there, yowling to be let out, but he focused on Inej’s movements. This was her revenge. Toma Ilin would die by no steel but hers. 

Kaz closed the door behind him. Ilin’s broad back undulated, shiny with sweat. If the Suli girl saw Kaz approach over Ilin’s shoulder, she didn’t react.

Inej crushed a rose petal between her fingers. She let the shreds flutter down, eyes closed, nostrils flared. When she opened them, her dark irises were depthless in their resolve. She dipped her chin.

That was the only signal Kaz required. He smashed the full weight of his cane onto Ilin’s forearm and relished the loud crack that reverberated through his palms. Ilin howled and rolled off the bed, his broken arm sagging at an odd angle. He was quick on his feet for such a big man, whirling around and reaching for his pistol, but not quick enough. Kaz brought him to his knees with two sharp jabs.

Inej was there in a heartbeat. She sank her knee into his soft, flabby stomach, pinning him to the carpet. The Suli girl whimpered, cowering beneath the sheets.

“Do you remember me?” Inej asked, her voice a soft caress. The slender, bone-handled knife Kaz had given her hovered over Ilin’s throat, just close enough to whisper against his skin with every jagged breath. “You remembered me, before. The girl with the crown of roses, the petals drifting down, down…” She pressed the blade a little closer. Ilin swallowed loudly and blood welled beneath the metal.

When he opened his mouth to respond, Inej shoved a handful of rose petals to the back of his throat. He spluttered and choked, arms rising to push her away, but Kaz wrenched them behind his back. A muffled, animalistic squeal tore from Ilin’s throat; the broken bone gave easily, shifting out of place beneath Kaz’s iron grip.

Inej trailed the knife down Ilin’s torso, leaving a thin, oozing line in its wake. Ilin’s squeals rose to an insistent, panicked whine as the metal nicked over his pelvis, matting the hair there with blood. Kaz couldn’t understand what he was screaming through the clot of soggy petals, but it sounded like the sweetest music.

Inej’s eyes were inhuman when she looked into Ilin’s face. The hairs on the back of Kaz’s neck rose. Was this what Dirtyhands looked like? How many times had Inej seen his face like this: taut with raw, bestial violence? His stomach clenched. Shame was not an emotion he allowed himself to feel, not if he wanted to survive in the Barrel, but it welled up inside him.  _ Look at what you’ve turned her into. _

Inej held Ilin’s eyes for a long time, her lips curled in a dark smile, before lifting her gaze to Kaz. Lost planets, black moons—that was how he had once described Inej’s eyes. They sucked him in, he was falling, falling. To where? He could be anywhere but here he was, working no other angle beyond bringing pain down on the piece of scum who had hurt his girl. He plummeted towards the bottom and saw a life where he could cobble himself into a man deserving of her.

His fingers twitched on Ilin’s arms. The shame ebbed and flowed away, black water down a drain. “Do it.”

Ilin bucked and screeched but went utterly still when Inej sliced off his favourite part with one decisive sweep of her blade. He’d passed out. Great spurts of blood shot from his groin, falling like fat rubies amongst the shredded petals.

The Suli girl screamed and retched. Dirtyhands might have suggested shoving Ilin’s cock down his throat with the rose petals, but quick footsteps thudded outside in the corridor. Kaz let Ilin’s bulk thump onto the carpet, grabbed Inej’s hand, and ran.

His leg blazed, but only when they were several streets away from the brothel did their pace slow. Inej’s chest heaved, cheeks flushed, eyes bright like volcanic glass. 

Kaz wanted to kiss her again. The realisation landed like a punch in the gut.

Moonlight played in the midnight strands of her hair. She smoothed back flyaway tendrils, smearing blood across her cheek. Covered in blood, her forehead shiny with sweat; she was luminous, the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. 

She stepped closer and his heart lurched in a double-beat. Terrifying. The reactions she wrung from his body terrified him yet his hands itched to reach for her.

She whispered something in Suli then, as the tears dripped free and rolled in silver rivulets down her cheeks, “I’m free. I’m finally free.”

He pulled her against his chest, buried his face in the spicy-sweet scent of her hair. Minutes passed, or hours. Kaz wanted to take this moment in his thieving fingers and sequester it away so it would never end.

“The carriage is waiting for us,” Inej said, glancing up at the waning gibbous moon.

Her breath ghosted against the underside of his jaw. His arms tightened around her, stealing a few more moments before he let her go. Her absence opened a hole in his chest and left him cold.

She disappeared down the alley and Kaz limped after her, chasing the warmth. Wherever she went, he would always follow.

Standing at the edge of the city, staring out over the water, Kaz sensed Inej’s presence like a second heartbeat. 

“It’s Jesper’s birthday soon.” She laid her elbows on the railing. Smoke from the Reaper’s Barge rose in lazy tendrils, poisoning the rich orange haze of dusk. “Are you coming to the party?”

It had been two weeks since their little trip to Belendt. Inej lived in the Van Eck mansion, though she spent most of her time with him at his property on the Lid, orchestrating the spectacular downfall of Heleen van Houden. He wanted to give Inej a permanent room. The words always got stuck in his throat.

The light infused her rich brown skin with gold. Every time he looked at her, he found something new to be enamoured with, some new detail to spend his waking hours admiring like a scholar with an illuminated manuscript. She caught him staring at her and arched a brow—he made himself look away, flexing his gloved fingers around the head of his cane. 

“I’ll consider it,” he said.

Her laugh attracted his stare again; this time, he couldn’t look away. Anticipation rose in his chest as she angled herself closer, rising on tiptoes, bringing her mouth to his. Kaz expected the brush of her lips—craved it—but the barest touch had nausea roiling in his gut. 

_ Not now. Please, not now. _

Waves crashed around him. Water rose in his throat. The stink of rotting, burning bodies blew in from the sea, the stench so powerful it made him stumble back.

“Kaz?”

He seized her voice like a lifeline to drag himself to shore. Shuddering breaths tore through his lungs.  _ You’re not drowning.  _ The water slowly receded until he could see her concerned face.

“What happened to you?”

_ Tell her. Tell her everything. _

He’d ignored that voice in the hotel bathroom and she had still looked at him with eyes as soft as caramel. He didn’t deserve her, yet she’d come back. She’d stayed.

Breathing deeply through his nose, Kaz gazed out past the Reaper’s Barge, all the way to where sea and sky met in a murky yellow streak. He owed her something. He owed her  _ everything. _

So he told her.

He only realised he was shaking when she laid a tentative hand on his arm. Her eyes shone, though not with pity. He leaned into her silent strength, placing his hand over hers. They didn’t speak, only stood by the water as the moon rose and his tremors slowly subsided.

“I tried conquering it, once,” he said into the stillness. He felt Inej’s eyes on his face. “This sickness. It didn’t work, so I put the gloves on and didn’t take them off again.”

He saw confusion in her eyes, in the ripple of her eyebrows.

“Until you,” he continued. “Only ever in front of you.”

_ How will you have me? Fully clothed, gloves on, your head turned away so our lips can never touch? _

Inej took a breath. “We don’t have to…”

He took one glove off and lifted his trembling fingers to Inej’s face. Her eyes fluttered closed, dark lashes fanned across her cheeks. Several heartbeats passed with his fingers hovering a hairsbreadth above her skin, close enough to feel her warmth but not quite touching. 

The waters didn’t rise. He cupped her cheek, standing so close he could feel her soft breaths on his chin.

“I want you,” he rasped. Inej had told him she would have him without armour or not at all. Saints, he had tried with every part of his rotten soul to shed his armour for her, to be the man that rose within him whenever she was near. It was hard, but… “I don’t want to stop trying. I don’t want you to stop touching me.”

She sighed, rolling her cheek into his palm. “Walk me home,” she said softly.

He did. They walked arm in arm through the Geldstraat, through the fancy mercher gardens that smelled of jasmine over the underlying stench of brine and fish. Insects chirruped in the bushes, drowsy from the onset of winter.

The windows of the Van Eck mansion were dark. He brought Inej right up to the front door and reluctantly let his arm slide away from hers.

She caught his hand before he could pull away, giving him a look that heated his blood. Without a word, she drew him into the doorway’s dark embrace. He let her lead him up the stairs, through the plushly carpeted halls to her bedroom. It was dark inside, the heavy drapes drawn save for a single sliver of moonlight. He couldn’t see Inej but he could sense her; his skin tingled from her proximity. 

She kissed him slowly, tenderly, her fingers working at his buttons while he undid her braid and ran his fingers through the silken strands. A rush of desire pooled in his stomach, but with it came the crashing water. The hands pushing his coat from his shoulders and loosening his tie were cold, wet, clammy. Tension shot through him. He was still too raw, the memories he had dredged up for Inej too close to the surface.

Her lips stilled. She carefully did his buttons back up. Kaz screwed his eyes shut, self-loathing rolling through him in black, frothing waves. 

“I’m sorry.” Inej had her back to him, busy lighting the candles on her nightstand. Shadows flickered on the walls from the taper clutched in her shaking fingers. “I shouldn’t have. I know you might not…”

“Inej. Look at me.” Longing tore through him at the sight of her bathed in the soft yellow candlelight. “I want to try.”

Her throat bobbed. “Do you trust me?”

_ With my life. _ He nodded.

Any words he might have spoken died in his throat. Inej faced him, deftly undoing the buttons of her tunic, peeling it off and letting it pool at her ankles. Then came the rest of her clothes—Kaz didn’t know where to look. He kept his gaze averted as heat rose to his cheeks and desire rushed further south than his stomach. 

When she came to stand in front of him, he looked nowhere but her eyes. They crinkled at the corners as she smiled. He tried not to look, he really did, but  _ Saints,  _ how could he not? Her naked skin glowed in the firelight. Shadows wavered at the edges, pooling in the dips and valleys of her lithe curves.

Inej caught his eyes, a faint smirk toying at her lips. His face burned. He swallowed against the dryness in his throat, curling and uncurling his hands at his sides to keep from touching. She slowly pulled off his loosened tie and pressed it into his hand.

She crawled onto the bed and held up her hands. “Tie me.” 

Every buzzing thought fled. He tried to swallow again and nearly choked. “What?”

“Tie my hands to the bed frame.” A pink flush suffused her skin. She quirked an eyebrow, inviting him closer.

He couldn’t move. His heart thumped painfully in his throat in time to the uncomfortable, insistent tightening in his trousers. The desperate need was there, thrumming just beneath his sweat-soaked skin, but something else lingered. Something cold, like water lapping around his ankles. He almost let the waves drag him out to sea; anything to loosen the iron grip around his windpipe.

He forced himself to take a step. Inej had laid herself bare for him, even after everything she had been through. It would be easier to give in to the sickness, to run and never look back, but he would regret it for the rest of his life if he didn’t at least try.

His fingers had never been so clumsy. Sparks shot through him when his knuckles brushed against her bare wrists. It took far too many tries to get the knots right, but finally, he had her hands tied loosely to the metal whorls of her bed frame. What now? He sat back, trying and failing to keep his eyes on her face.

“Go on,” she breathed.

Lust speared through him. The scene was so familiar—had she not whispered those exact words to him in the hotel bathroom? His fingers shook over her bare skin. Things were different now;  _ he  _ was different. He wanted to touch her, he just didn’t know where to begin.

Her hands. They were safe. He had held her bare hand countless times and barely felt the lick of the harbour. Lightly, he traced the tip of his finger over her callouses, down the centre of her palm to where his tie looped around her wrist. Rough scars peeked out from beneath the fabric.

Kaz went cold. The image of Inej hooded, hands bound, shuffling across the Goedmedbridge in shackles snapped through his mind.

He ran his thumb over the rope burns. “Are you sure you want this?”

She stretched languidly in response, pressing her body closer. Her eyes glittered in the candlelight before she let her eyelids drift closed.

The ache inside him rose to a keening whine. He made his hand move, trailing past the tie to the impossibly smooth stretch of her forearm. The Menagerie tattoo was gone but Dunyasha’s knife had left a raised, coin-sized scar. He remembered that wound. He remembered barely being able to stand the brief touches changing her bandages had required. But he had done it. He hadn’t drowned.

Inej’s black lashes fanned long shadows across her cheeks. Kaz brushed his lips over a faint scar on her eyebrow, a nick on her cheek, a pale scar on her upper lip. Their faces were so close. He heard her shallow breaths, felt the faint movement as she swallowed. 

“Go on,” she whispered into his mouth.

The skin of her throat was silky and warm as he kissed along it. Inej had stayed perfectly still beneath his shaky ministrations, but a breath escaped her when his lips found her collarbone. He focused on the heat emanating from her, fighting off the rising water. Inej was alive. She was alive, and she was his.

He drifted lower. One hand rested on her stomach, the other on her shoulder, keeping him steady as he kissed across her sternum. Lower. Smooth skin gave way to ridged scars across her breasts. He opened his eyes.

The feel of cold, bloated flesh beneath his hands became a distant memory, burned away in his rage. Through a red haze, he saw the bite marks. A growl rose in his throat.

Inej’s eyes flew open. “What is it?”

Kaz sat back on his haunches. The lance of pain through his leg at the movement was nothing compared to the maelstrom battering against his rib cage. He wanted to put a hole through something—preferably the face of whichever sadistic bastard had bitten Inej hard enough to leave scars. She followed his gaze and shrank inwards, trying to hide from view.

“Don’t.” He kissed the side of her breast, right over the small scar from Oomen’s knife. 

Another black bolt of fury shot through him. He would do to every one of Inej’s clients what he did to Oomen. He’d leave a trail of blood across the continent if he had to. He took that rage, coiled it tightly inside him, and channelled it into the way he dragged his lips across her skin.

Inej’s eyes fluttered closed with a breathy little sigh as his mouth roved over her torso, covering the scars with featherlight kisses. He kissed down the valley of her breasts, past her navel, around her hip. Her breaths came quick and fast, filling the space between them.

He grazed the long, slashing scars on her thighs and found that the waves had receded. The cold water lingered somewhere far, far beneath his skin, drowned out by the desire pulsing through every part of his body.

He found a spot on the inside of her knee that made her gasp and arch her back. Scraping it lightly with his teeth earned him a muffled moan between her clamped lips. A purely male part of him preened at the reaction, and Kaz finally understood why the other boys in the Dregs had bragged so often about their exploits.

Running his hands up the sides of her legs, he marked a path along her inner thigh with his tongue. She groaned his name on a shuddering breath and pulled at her restraints. He looked up to find her face flushed, inner lip sucked into her mouth, inky hair spread around her like his deepest fantasies. This was better than those snatches of imagined intimacy. Oh, this was so much better.

She caught her breath. Gulped. “I want you to touch me.”

A brief bout of confusion went through him until she spread her legs slightly and lifted her hips.  _ Oh.  _ Touch her… there. His skin went cold and clammy. He sat back, trembling like a leaf in the wind.

“I’ve never…”

Inej twisted her hands, pulling them free of his tie within a matter of seconds. He couldn’t help but huff out a laugh. 

She sat up, taking his hand in both of hers. “Can I show you?”

Kaz took a steeling breath and nodded. Holding his gaze, Inej guided his hand to the soft slickness between her legs, blowing out a shaky breath as she pushed his fingers in small, tight circles. Her head fell with a thunk against the metal bed frame while Kaz buried his face in the crook of her neck. 

It was almost too much. 

Damp skin beneath his cheek. Hearts hammering in unison. Jagged breaths. Tremulous moans.

Inej’s chest heaved. Her body went taut and loose in waves, her grip on his forearm alternating between satin-soft and vice-like. Then, in a string of garbled words and his name over and over again, he felt her come undone beneath his fingers.

It was a religious experience. He’d mocked Inej for her Saints, but kneeling on the bed, watching her bask in the afterglow… he finally understood what it was to worship something.

She caught him staring and gave him a drowsy smile. He adjusted himself through his trousers, face going hot when her eyes tracked the movement.

He cleared his throat. “I should go, before the others get home.”

“Stay.” She shimmied under the covers, leaving a corner downturned for him. Her sleepy smile turned wicked. “I can return the favour.”

_ Saints.  _ His skin thrummed and a wave of dizziness swept over him as his blood rushed decidedly south. He slid into bed. His stomach flipped when Inej shifted closer, every part of his body tightening. Her fingers brushed over his hip and the anticipation abruptly splintered into panic.

_ I’m not ready.  _

He folded her to his chest, resting his chin on her hair. “Not tonight,” he said. The promise of many nights to come wavered between them.

Her soft breaths tickled his collarbone until they both fell asleep.


	3. Inej

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I decided to cut this chapter in half, so there will be 5 in total and the next one will also be from Inej's POV. Hope you enjoy!

The Menagerie had taught Inej to be a light sleeper, lest one of the other girls sneak into her room in the moonlight hours and steal her meagre belongings. She had honed the skill during her time with the Dregs, sleeping shallowly between stakeouts, ready to lurch into action at a word from Kaz. 

When her eyes snapped open and the cobwebs of early morning were stripped away, Inej knew two things instantly: she was in her bed at the Van Eck mansion, and a warm someone was draped around her. Heat prickled across her cheeks.

Kaz. 

The heat became a wildfire, roaring through her, reminding her of the night before.

Hot breath tickled her ear as he mumbled something in his sleep. His arms tightened around her stomach, bringing her flush against his chest. She huffed out a quiet laugh. Kaz was not a cuddler, but sleep seemed to rouse it from him.

Inej carefully disentangled herself and rolled over. His brows drew together, one hand reaching for the empty space.

Butterflies exploded in her stomach. In the depths of sleep, the harsh lines of Kaz’s face were smooth—it struck her how young he was, barely nineteen, with an empire to uphold and deep grudges to nurture. She wanted to reach out and brush the hair from his forehead, but she wouldn’t dream of touching him when he wasn’t awake.

One eye cracked open. His breaths changed as he woke, stuttering and hitching before settling on a long exhale. His lopsided smile made her pulse jump.

“Morning,” he said, his voice even rougher from sleep. He propped his chin up on one hand and gazed down at her.

The scene was so domestic. A husband and wife, waking in the same bed, laying together at night, raising their children, the pitter-patter of little feet outside the door. Inej would never have that. She didn’t  _ want  _ that.

The butterflies withered into ash. The pleasurable tingle of last night turned to scuttling insects across her flesh. She rolled out of bed and pulled on her lapis silk robe, fighting the sudden tightness in her throat. His eyes followed her to her dressing table. She felt them on her back, tunnelling into her skin.

Sheets rustled, then he was standing behind her in the mirror. Inej ran a comb through her hair and blinked away the wetness at the corners of her eyes. He didn’t speak while she braided her hair, just hovered like a spectre, close enough to touch but so, so distant.

“Do you regret it?” His hands were shoved deep in his pockets, but she could tell from the tightness in his shoulders that his fists were clenched.

Did she? She had many regrets in her life. Casting her mind to the way he had touched her bare body… last night was not one of them. She’d felt coveted. Beautiful. His mouth on her neck and his fingers between her legs had made her blood sing.

“No,” she said. “Last night was…”  _ Breathtaking. Wondrous. Magnificent.  _ “... nice.”

His eyebrows flew up. “... Just nice?”

Humour bubbled in her chest but she quickly tamped it down.

“I need you to understand something.” She kept her eyes on a porcelain figurine of a Ravkan woman, replete with splendid colours painstakingly painted by hand. It was a gift from Wylan—he said it was to remind her of Nina while away at sea. “Not every night at the Menagerie was physically painful. My mind was elsewhere, but sometimes… sometimes my body reacted.” She passed a hand over her eyes. “I don’t regret last night. I just can’t help feeling… tainted. Dirty, somehow.” 

She wasn’t sure Kaz was breathing. His cheeks were ghostly pale. A muscle ticked in his jaw like a hummingbird’s wingbeat until he finally opened his mouth.

“You’re not dirty.” He reached out a hand, hesitated, then smoothed his thumb over her braid. Their eyes met in the mirror. “I don’t know how much it means for me to say it, but you’ve never been dirty. Everything you did, everything you endured, it was to survive. You’re a survivor.”

Survivor. Predator. Dangerous.

She tried to see herself from his eyes: a dangerous girl, an entity to be feared in the Barrel and on the True Sea. Only a tired girl peered back at her from the mirror.

“I can leave.” Kaz shrugged on his coat and took up his cane. His eyes went to the window.

Inej imagined him climbing down the perilously smooth wall, clambering over the fence, and limping all the way to the Slat.

“Stay.” She twisted so that she was looking at him and not his reflection. “Stay and have breakfast with us. Will you?”

Kaz pursed his lips. “Fine. Though I warn you, I will give Jesper’s comments all the attention they deserve—that is to say, none whatsoever.” 

Jesper’s mouth dropped in a comical ‘O’ when he saw her come down the stairs with Kaz in tow. It was only after a swift kick under the table from Wylan that he returned his attention to his plate.

Inej scooped herself a bowl of porridge. Kaz sat next to her and did the same, adding a healthy sprinkling of brown sugar. His suit was impeccable, hair tidily combed. She’d straightened his tie.

A dense and soupy silence settled over the dining room. Spoons scraping against bowls, the quiet slurping of tea, servants moving quietly about and clearing away empty platters; those were the only sounds before Wylan spoke.

“Will you finish your painting today do you think, Mum?”

Marya Hendriks’ eyes were clear and bright, free from the dim haze that had clouded them since her time in the Church of Saint Hilde. She chewed ponderously, wiped her mouth, set her paint-flecked hands on the table.

"I would hope so. My new varnish arrived last week from Noyvi Zem. If I finish today, it can be sealed come summer."

They chatted back and forth about the painting and the weather until both topics dried up. Thick silence descended again. Inej pretended she couldn’t see the conversation Jesper and Wylan were having with their eyes.

Wylan cleared his throat. “So… what are your plans for the day?”

Inej set her spoon on the table. “I’m going to kill Tante Heleen.”

Jesper choked on his toast and had to be thumped on the back by Wylan before he could speak. “You’re what? Today?”

Kaz cast her a sharp look. They’d been preparing for months but hadn’t decided precisely when they would put their plan into action. Inej couldn’t explain it—something felt right. Today was the day. She  _ was  _ a dangerous girl.

His hand brushed against her knee under the table. She laid her hand on his.

Jesper stared at her, then at Kaz, then back again.

“Why are you here, again?” he asked Kaz.

Wylan kicked Jesper under the table hard enough to make him yelp. Kaz stared at him while he finished his mouthful, his jaw working mechanically.

“Why are you here, Jesper.”

“Me and Wylan had sex and I slept in his bed.”

Wylan buried his face in his hands, the tips of his ears flushing pink. He peeked at his mother through his fingers—Marya continued eating her breakfast serenely as though she hadn’t heard a thing.

“Wylan and I,” Kaz said.

“What?”

“‘Wylan and I’ had sex, not ‘me and Wylan’.” 

And so the bickering went on. Inej was desperately relieved when one of the maids came in with a letter for her on a silver plate. She tore it open and read it quickly. As her eyes flew over the paper, her stomach dropped to her feet.

She didn’t realise she was crying until a fat tear splashed onto the ink and made the words blur.

“Inej?” Kaz’s voice, low and close to her ear.

Inej palmed the wetness from her cheeks and took a shuddering inhale. She stalled, folding and unfolding the letter before finally setting it on the table. She cleared her throat to get rid of the waver she knew would be in her voice. “Nina was finally able to bury Matthias.”

The silence that descended was different from before. It didn’t bear the same uncomfortable viscosity, yet the yawning stillness held a sharp undercurrent of pain. Inej didn’t hear it—she saw it in the wobble of Wylan’s lip, the solemn way Jesper bowed his head, the curling of Kaz’s fingers around the crow’s head of his cane.

“It’s what he would have wanted,” Jesper said after a long beat. “Now, hopefully Nina can find peace as well.” 

“I wish she’d stayed.” Wylan twisted a napkin in his hands, staring down at his plate. “I know she needed to go, but I wish we could be with her, you know?” 

Inej knew. She thought of Nina every day, sending her prayers over the ice plains of Fjerda. She saw Nina in the tin idols in Little Ravka, the ostentatious jewelry in shop windows—but most of all, she saw Nina in the stacks of syrup-laden waffles she would buy to keep up tradition.

Nina occupied a permanent place in Inej’s heart. Which was why, as she and Kaz strode along West Stave, Inej stopped short at the House of the White Rose. For just a moment, she could have sworn she saw Nina’s face in the dark upper windows. She looked again and it was just a sad, scared girl in a fake  _ kefta  _ waiting for the impossible—her indenture to be finished so she could finally be free.

A fire lit in Inej’s heart. Once she was through with Tante Heleen, she would dismantle every brothel on West Stave.  _ Brick by brick,  _ that’s what Kaz would always say. Brick by brick.

Kaz stayed down on the street while she shimmied up a drainage pipe and perched on the edge of a roof. It was still morning—Tante Heleen would not have any clients until well after noon.

Inej scampered across a thick stretch of rope. Below, she caught flashes of many-coloured silks. What was left of the Menagerie loitered in disjointed groups, milling under the prominent awning of another, more fortunate House. 

The silks and finery remained but the girls’ eyes were soulless. Or perhaps Inej had come to know life at its most vibrant and these directionless wisps of girls seemed subfusc in comparison. She watched them float from one place to the next, her stomach clenching.  _ That could be me. That  _ was  _ me. _

Her fingers trembled as she reached for the stack of papers tucked inside her coat. She hugged them to her chest—she and Kaz had spent a year collecting them; to lose the papers to the snatching wind now would be a cruel trick for her Saints to play. 

She looked for Kaz in the long morning shadows but he had disappeared, melting unequivocally into the alleyways as though he were the Wraith. She knew he would appear when she needed him. The thought did nothing to ease the hammering in her chest or the tremor in her legs.

Inej closed her eyes.  _ Be strong, meja,  _ said her mother’s voice, clear and bright in her mind.  _ Be strong.  _

She was strong. She was a survivor.

A strange calm settled over Inej when she saw the Peacock, resplendent in teal and gold brocade, strutting beneath a gilded parasol. Terror didn’t tighten her lungs. The rage that usually thundered through her when she thought of this woman was only a whisper of smoke against her throat. Her hatred was a small black seed lodged at the base of her heart. Inej didn’t let it blossom—quiet resolve crept through her, stilling the last of her shudders.

Using her body as a shield against the wind, she struck a match and held it to the edge of the first paper. The flames gorged themselves, leaving nothing but ash that wafted down and landed on the surface of the canal like dying petals.

“Adjala,” Inej called. The girl looked up. Her bronze skin was wan, the Suli silks hanging loosely from what Inej remembered to be a soft and curving frame. A spike went through her heart. How had she ever thought this girl had come to Tante Heleen of her own free will? “Adjala,” she said again. “You’re free.”

She consigned the next contract to the flames. “Caera, you’re free.”

The girls turned their faces to the drifting ash like children on their first snowfall. None of them moved. Would Inej have believed it if someone had appeared and told her she was free? In her early days at the Menagerie, perhaps. Eventually, there came a time where any promise of hope was sure to be a trap.

Tante Heleen loosed an ugly laugh from deep in her throat. “What a wonderful performance from my little Suli lynx. You don’t really believe the contracts you and that thug Brekker have been pilfering from my files are the originals, do you?

The black seed of hate pulsed.

_ You are tall and powerful.  _ The Peacock cut a diminutive figure far below; a mere insect clad in glossy chitin. 

“No.” Inej continued setting light to the bonds chaining Adjala, Caera, and all the other girls to the Menagerie. “That’s why we broke into the Gemensbank.”

Tante Heleen’s face blanched. Inej tore the header off one of the contracts and let the pale green seal flutter down to Tante Heleen’s waiting, contorted face. She caught the scrap between her taloned fingers, her pale cheeks instantly suffusing with bright, mottled red.

She screeched, long, loud, and high like her namesake.

The girls fled. Cobbet lunged for them but his meaty arms were met with the crushing weight of Kaz’s cane. Bones cracked, Cobbet yelled, and great crows of mirth swelled along the canals from the diffraction of multi-coloured girls running to their freedom. The girls shed their bangles and bells, throwing them into the water.

Laughter bubbled in Inej’s chest. Heleen squawked and swore and demanded that Inej come to face her instead of lingering on the rooftops like a coward. It only made her want to laugh all the more.

Inej slid down to the street and strode forwards until she was an arm’s length from Heleen. The Peacock’s hair hung in ruined ringlets, more like hay than burnished gold. Her pale skin gleamed with sweat. Inej’s mirth faded, though not to be replaced by fear. She was done fearing this woman.

“I stole your precious diamond choker.” Inej kept her voice at the intimate half-whisper Heleen would use with her girls before she lashed out and struck them. Heleen’s bejeweled hand rose to her conspicuously bare throat, her eyes narrowing to venomous slits. “I should have killed you at the Ice Court,” Inej said softly, drawing Sankt Petyr from his sheath, “but death is too kind for you. Far too kind. You will instead spend the rest of your days wondering when I will next appear from the shadows and take something from you.”

Before Heleen could draw breath to scream, Inej struck. They thudded to the cobbles together, rolling once, and stopped at the very lip of the canal. Cobbet reached for her and met the business end of Kaz’s cane again.

Inej planted a knee on Heleen’s chest. Sankt Petyr was warm in her palm, a familiar, comforting weight. Heleen thrashed beneath her like a fish. Inej sank her knee in deeper and seized Heleen’s wrist, holding her forearm in place.

“You will look at this every day and remember who gave it to you.”

Inej’s tormentor, her abuser, her rapist and her worst nightmare screamed as Inej carved a crude peacock feather on the soft flesh of her forearm. Pure, fiery righteousness flared through Inej. Tears pooled in Heleen’s eyes but she didn’t look away.  _ Good. Look at me as I share my pain. _

“Now go.” Inej rolled away and uncoiled to her feet, wiping her blade clean of Heleen’s blood in the same movement.

The Peacock stayed curled on the ground, sobbing and clutching her mangled arm. Inej almost felt sorry for her. Almost, but not quite. 

“You will see me again, Heleen van Houden. Be on your guard.”

Kaz appeared at her side as she strode away from West Stave. A thin trickle of blood ran from a cut on his eyebrow but aside from that, he appeared uninjured. They didn’t speak. Inej wiped the ash from her fingers. 

It was done. She didn’t feel as buoyant as she thought she would. There was no skip in her step and her heart did not glow with happiness. Inside, she was utterly still, like the placid surface of a lake. Content. At last.

“Is there anything else you’d like to burn?” Inej heard the smile in his voice.

“Just one other thing…”


	4. Inej

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bit of a short chapter because it was originally supposed to be appended to the previous one. I know it's been a while so tysm to anyone who is still following! Final chapter should be out in the next couple of weeks ^.^
> 
> Enjoy! I welcome constructive criticism x

Once, Inej had imagined the Suli girls in the  _ Rare Spices  _ sign laughing and running free. As flames licked up the edge of the sign and the paint bubbled and cracked, Inej really could hear the peals of laughter—they came from her own lips, head thrown back, happy tears leaking from the corners of her eyes. Finally, the girls were free to dance for no one but themselves.

The sign was quickly reduced to ash, a dark plume of smoke meandering into the afternoon air. The  _ stadwatch  _ sounded the alarm; shouts of ‘fire, fire!’ chased her and Kaz all the way to the rundown linen warehouse at the edge of the warehouse district.

Giddy and laughing, Inej threw herself onto one of the rolls of linen. The warehouse hadn’t been repurposed yet, which was odd, but the damage from the Shu attack must have kept the government occupied and concerned with much larger repairs than an old, rotting building on the edge of the city. Inej smoothed her hand over the fabric, watching the smoke swirl and meld with the low clouds.

Her laughs subsided and she breathed it in, the stinging smoke and charred wood and filthy city. When she opened her eyes, she caught Kaz staring. He was sitting across from her, just like the last time, cane resting over his knees with a hunger in his eyes that made her skin sensitive to every fibre of the linen beneath her and the fact they were entirely alone, in an abandoned warehouse where they wouldn’t be disturbed, no matter what they were doing. What did she want to be doing?

Blazing heat spread across her face but she didn’t look away. His dark eyes pulled her in; she didn’t think she’d be able to look away even if she wanted to.

“I want to try again,” Kaz said in his rough-gravel voice. 

The heat in her face dipped lower, suffusing her chest, her gut, between her legs. She rubbed her thighs together, swallowed heavily, and nodded. Her pulse hammered in her throat, blotting out the cry of gulls outside the open window. Just the sight of him crawling towards her was enough to raise the tempo of her heartbeat to a crescendo and make her breaths turn quick and stuttering.

Dark hair fell over his eyes, his bitter coffee eyes, so close now they eclipsed everything. She caught a glimpse of the pale scars on his face before his mouth was on hers, rough and demanding and everything she didn’t know she needed, but she needed it, she needed him. Her hands flew to his hair, curling through the strands, tugging him closer as the heat unfurled in her belly and turned everything soft and syrupy and lovely.

She wanted this. Their lips moved together, sending sparks racing down her spine, and he splayed a hand on her stomach, pushing her back onto the linen. Nipping at his lower lip tore a groan from low in the back of his throat; the sound pulsed through her, urging her on, stripping away any flickering unease lingering at the edges of her mind. She took him by the lapels and rolled, flipping them, her legs straddling his stomach.

He broke the kiss with a sharp intake of breath, his eyes scrunching closed. One hand gripped at his bad leg, bunching the fabric.

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.” Inej began to move away but Kaz caught her by the waist, keeping her still.

“I’m fine,” he said hoarsely, slowly cracking his eyes open. His throat bobbed. “I’m fine. Just a twinge. Can we keep going?”

Inej waited for the bolt of guilt to fade before she slowly leaned down, her braid swinging, and pressed a light kiss to his lips. No longer burning, these kisses were slow and molten, moving something unfamiliar deep inside her. His hands were on her body, exploring, peeling away her clothes as she undid his buttons between the unhurried kisses. 

Seismic, that was how she would describe it. She felt her entire being shift, brought closer to the surface, becoming more like her true self even as she left pieces of her past behind. The last button fell free from its loop and Kaz’s shirt fell open for her, unveiling the flat plane of his stomach, making her breath hitch. She shifted lower, straddling his hips, pressing open-mouthed kisses along his jaw at the same lackadaisical pace, even though her heartbeat galloped in her ears, faster and faster the more she shifted against him. 

Her mouth brushed his throat and Kaz went utterly still beneath her.

Inej pulled back, planting her hands on either side of his head to push herself away and put some distance between their faces. “Is this alright? Do you want me to stop?”

“No.” Kaz curled her braid between his fingers, rubbing his thumb against it as though it were a talisman. She watched the frantic beating of his pulse under his thin, pale skin gradually slow. “Do you want to stop?”

“No.”

He closed his eyes and took a few deep breaths, nostrils flaring. When his eyes flew open they were dark, almost black, poised to devour her. “Good.” He tugged her down, crushing his mouth to hers.

_ Don’t stop. Never stop.  _ Inej’s breaths turned into gasps, her thighs tightening around him as his hands fisted in her hair, pulling her closer, kissing her like he didn’t need air. Every part of her was alive and glowing, singing beneath his touch; his hands skated down her neck, her shoulders, tracing her body before settling on her hips. 

Their mouths broke apart as Kaz’s head thudded back, eyes clenched tight, lips pressed in a thin line to suppress a moan. Inej grinned as she gazed down at him. Kaz Brekker, clutching desperately to his composure beneath her—she felt powerful, in control, and she loved it. She steadied herself with her hands flat against his chest, breathing hard, seating herself as low as she could on his hips.

Good, this felt good. Kaz’s grip grew tighter, urging her; she rolled her hips in response, frissons of pleasure sparkling through her core at the contact. She chased the feeling, faster, faster, blood singing, but the feel of him through the layers of fabric struck a discordant note and her approaching climax abruptly fell away.

She scrambled away from him, clutching her clothes to her chest. She couldn’t breathe, she was dying, her throat swelled closed around the thick stench of vanilla.

She’d dealt with Ilin. She’d dealt with Tante Heleen. It was over. It should be over. Why was this happening?

Air whistled through her nose but it wasn’t enough to fill her lungs or calm her spiking heartbeat. She pressed her forehead against the wall and focused on the rough scrape of brick, squeezing her eyes closed.  _ Breathe, meja,  _ said her mother’s voice, and she tried, she really tried, but the action wouldn’t come naturally.

She heard Kaz slide off the bolt of linen and limp towards her, his steps uneven against the creaking floorboards. He came to stand somewhere behind her, huffing out shaky breaths between a soft rustling; she thought he might be pulling his shirt back on.

“Inej.”

Her throat grew even tighter, forming a lump, then she was crying. Hot, fat tears splashed down her cheeks; trying to hold them in hurt, like an iron fist closing around her windpipe.

“I’m sorry.” She choked out the words, pressing a hand over her mouth as though that would somehow staunch the sobs. “I’m sorry, I don’t know why I’m crying. I wanted to, I really did, I  _ want  _ to, I’m just… I’m sorry.”

Her harsh sniffles filled the air for just a moment before he stepped forwards and wrapped his arms around her waist.

“Is this alright?” he murmured into her hair, his breath warm across her scalp.

Tautness speared through her limbs for a heartbeat before she relaxed, leaning backwards into his embrace. She tried to tearfully apologise again but Kaz quietly shushed her, hugging her closer.

“We can try again in a week, a month, a year, or never, if you’re not ready. Any part of yourself you give to me is more than I deserve.”

She didn’t know how long they stood there. The horizon blazed persimmon, darkness fell and the distant city came alive; through it all, Kaz clung to her, and she clung back until her pulse slowed and she could finally breathe again.


	5. Kaz

No party was complete without half the Dregs drinking themselves into a stinking, squalid stupor. Jesper’s birthday was no exception. Specht sloshed liquor down his front to a peal of raucous laughter and applause from Rotty, Roeder tried to perform a somersault from the plinth of a statue and landed on his face, and Pim—Pim was vomiting all over Van Eck mansion’s shining marble floors. 

All of this was accompanied by a jaunty tune played on the harpsichord, flute, and violin. Very tasteful, Kaz thought.

He watched the party from the mezzanine, dressed in his finest suit, the silver crow’s head of his cane polished to a high shine. A flash of Kaelish hair in the crowd marked Colm’s path from the drinks table to Marya, who stood beside a painting of Wylan and Jesper with their arms thrown around each other. The birthday boy himself danced a jig with Inej’s parents, dressed up in all their Suli finery; he could hear the jangling bangles, even so far removed from the dancing.

Then there was Inej, emerald silks splaying wide as she spun, caught up in the wild abandon of the music. His eyes kept finding her, no matter where she was in the room, no matter that she was at least a head shorter than everyone else. He always found her. His mouth went dry watching her dance and his chest grew uncomfortably tight, but he couldn’t look away.

“Why don’t you join the party?” Anika leaned her forearms on the railing, standing far too close to him.

Kaz didn’t look at her but he felt her sidelong glance, the sly flick of her eyes between him and Inej. He was staring, he knew, but what was the point of trying to hide it? She was flushed, almost glowing, head tipped back in a laugh; the sound speared through his gut and brought his blood to a simmer. Jesper caught her around the waist and twirled her into a dance—they moved in tandem, Jesper’s hand flat on her back between her shoulder blades, and suddenly, Kaz didn’t feel anything at all. Cold emptiness crept into his gut. He clenched his teeth and the hollowness turned ugly and bitter, howling at him to knock Jesper’s teeth down his throat. 

_She doesn’t belong to you. She doesn’t belong to anyone._ The rational thoughts did nothing to ease his locked jaw or make him prise his fingers from his cane. She looked so carefree, dancing with Jesper. Happy. His breaths were coarse, rasping through his nose, and he wondered: did she look so happy when she was with him?

“You know,” Anika said, laying her hand on his sleeve. He stared at her coldly but her hand didn’t fall away as Imogen’s had; it only slid higher up his arm, dragging wet, writhing, rotting tendrils to his shoulder. “You and I could dance, make her a little jealous—”

Her thought ended in midair when Kaz flicked her hand away from him with his cane and smashed it onto the bannister, pinning her by the palm with the crow’s sharp and silver beak. To her credit, Anika didn’t cry out—merely made a muffled sound and glared at him through eyes shiny with tears. He glared back, pouring every ounce of derision he had into the curl of his lip.

“I can’t imagine what impression I gave that made you think I was in any way interested. You overstep, Anika.” He lifted his cane and she immediately snatched her hand away, running her thumb over a deep welt in her palm.

She slunk away, cradling her hand to her chest, and Kaz turned back to the party to find Inej’s eyes on him. In the middle of the dancing bodies, completely motionless, her expression hard and unreadable. His insides shrivelled but on the outside, he simply straightened his cuffs and made his way to the stairs. _Jealous bastard. Fool. Why did you do that?_

Because Anika should know better. Because no one touches the bastard of the Barrel without his permission.

His bad leg gave a sharp twinge when he reached the bottom stair and he had to lean on his cane for a moment. More than a moment—his chin was still dipped to his chest to hide his grimace when Silvija Ghafa’s plum silks fluttered into view.

He’d met Inej’s parents that day on the quay, his heart in such an anxious patter he could barely look at them. It was no different now than it was then. He made himself look up and meet the eyes that were so like Inej’s, rimmed with kohl, glittering with the traces of a smile like she knew something you didn’t, some secret about you, but of course, she wouldn’t tell a soul. _Our little secret._ Unnerving, the thought that there was someone else in this world other than Inej who seemed to know exactly what he was thinking.

“Mrs Ghafa,” he said, bowing at the waist, ignoring the sear that shot from his knee to his hip with the movement.

“Please, how many times must I insist you call me Silvija?”

Silvija and Teo—Inej’s parents—were the only ones capable of making him feel like a boy instead of a Barrel boss, sweating under their gaze as he brought their daughter flowers, took her to a show on East Stave, promised to have her home by the time the Exchange clocks struck midnight. Like he and Inej were sweet, innocent children without a care in the world, their only anxieties about what to wear, what the other thought of them. He made himself hold her gaze, battling against the weak, bashful part inside of him that wanted very much to examine the tops of his shoes.

Kaz cleared his throat, fingers flexing around his cane, and made sure his voice came out as steady and assured as always. “Silvija,” he said, inclining his head to her, then to the dance floor. Or what counted as a dance floor between the drunk, staggering bodies of the Dregs. “Can I entice you into a dance?”

Her lips quirked into one of her small, secret smiles and she nodded, the bands around her ankles tinkling with every step she took into the crowd. Kaz left his cane leaning against the bannister, braving first one step into the press of bodies, then another. The sickness didn’t rise. It was a long way off—had been for a while, ever since Inej came back to Ketterdam and coaxed him further out to sea until he learned to rock with the movement of the waves.

He tried desperately not to think about Inej _coaxing_ him in any way whatsoever as he walked towards her mother, preparing to put his hands on her waist and dance, however perfunctorily, with a mere few inches between their faces. _Think of anything,_ anything, _other than that._

Violence, brutality—those were safe. The burn and pull in his muscles as he swung his cane and it collided, _crack,_ against a skull or forearm, the tension in his hamstring from kicking someone into a canal, holding their head beneath the water, letting them up for air over and over until they talked. That was Dirtyhands. That was his life. He was so absorbed in the rigour of his thoughts, the savage push and pull—its own sort of dance—that he almost didn’t register Silvija speaking.

All at once, he was in the Van Eck mansion again, turning slowly, Silvija’s hands on his shoulders, her voice in his ear. “I have never seen her so happy.”

People were looking. Their stares jabbed him in the back and made concentrating on keeping his balance, rocking awkwardly in time to the music, exceedingly difficult. Dancing couples dodged him and Silvija on their full, working legs which carried them in spins and leaps and ostentatious, flouncing twirls—he’d never felt so crippled, so maladroit.

 _This was a terrible idea._ His jaw clenched, another thrill of pain shooting through him. If he could just endure it until the end of this song, he could spend the remainder of the evening hunting down everyone who was staring at him and plucking out their eyeballs.

“Her eyes light up like they did when she was a little girl.” Silvija’s hands were firm on his shoulders; an acrobat’s hands, steering him through the throng, leading the dance. “She told us how you saved her… saved her from that place. Thank you.”

Rigidity snapped through him and the crowd fell away, his vanity crumbling to ash around the shock that shot through his stomach like a bullet. “I didn’t save her. She saved _me,_ more times than I can count. More times than I care to admit.”

Tears shone in Silvija’s eyes, beading like starlight over her dark irises. The length and breadth of her emotion disturbed him—what was it like, wearing your heart where everyone could see it, opening up your deepest vulnerabilities in the middle of a crowded room, face half-crumpled with the effort of keeping it in? He thought of Inej, her features so similar to her mother’s yet harder, somehow, as though the ravages of time had crystallised on her young face and made it an impenetrable fortress. What would Inej have been like if she had been allowed to live out her childhood? Soft, loving, unafraid of opening her heart?

“The heart is an arrow.” Silvija had steadily drifted to the edge of the dance floor and now stood smiling up at him, moisture seeping from the corners of her eyes. She pushed on his shoulders, turning his face away. “It demands aim to land true.”

His eyes fell on Inej. What would he have been like if he hadn’t been birthed from the harbour? Just another dumb pigeon ripe for the taking. If it hadn’t been Pekka Rollins, he would have been someone else’s mark. And without their terrible, twisted journey through this terrible, twisted world, he never would have met _her_. He couldn’t imagine a world where he hadn’t.

Sweat slicked his palms to the inside of his gloves. He couldn’t muster even a flicker of mirth for the Suli proverb— _like mother, like daughter_ —because something had a stranglehold on his stomach, squeezing it tighter and tighter the longer he held Inej’s gaze. What was she thinking? Light and shadows played on her face like a Komedie Brute mask, concealing everything but her eyes—her eyes seemed to glow in the half instant before she turned, angling her body away, still looking at him over her shoulder. The barest curve of a smile brushed her lips and her whole expression seemed to soften, turning liquid under the coloured lights.

He couldn’t think over the wild beating of his heart. Like a moth to a flame, he followed her, limping around the edge of the room, following the wisps of silk that swished and flowed around her ankles with every step. She glanced back at him once more before slipping out onto the terrace and he followed, of course he followed, he was completely helpless when it came to her.

When he saw her leaning against the balustrade, edged with starlight, he forgot how to breathe, how to think. The nighttime disappeared and he was in the linen warehouse, Inej’s soft body pressed against him. He hadn’t known he could feel so much in so many places, the sensations rising to a fever pitch until it felt as though he would jump from his skin. He hadn’t been in control—of his body, his mind, his every thought—but for her? He would relinquish control of anything if only to have her by his side.

Perhaps that made him weak. _I don’t care._

“Can you spare me a dance?” Inej batted her eyelashes at him, moonlight gleaming in her eyes, casting her impish smile in burnished silver.

She was making fun of him. He stalked closer, stripping off his gloves, and her gaze dropped to his hands. She swallowed, her cheeks taking on a dull flush which was visible even in the semi-darkness.

Kaz forced himself not to smirk. “I don’t dance, as a rule. Would you make me break my own rules twice in one night?” 

Inej didn’t back away, didn’t so much as flinch as he came to stand over her, staring down into her eyes. He’d always admired that quality in her; her steadfastness, the way she held her ground and gutted anyone who tried to make her move aside. Others shrank away when he approached, or blustered and puffed out their chests—not her. She had always quietly watched him, coolly assessing, before deciding if she would rather slip away or brave his bad temper with little more than a lifted eyebrow and a murmured Suli proverb.

 _What would I do without you?_ His hands slid around her waist, brushing against the band of exposed skin; warm, supple, and alive. He marvelled at the fact he could touch her, skin to skin, and the water was so far away so as to be nonexistent. 

“What happened with Anika?” Her hands were laced behind his neck, her head tilted back so he could see her pursed lips.

They stood there on the terrace, scraps of music floating to them through the cracked-open glass doors, poised as if to dance, but neither of them moved. He brushed his thumbs in small circles against her waist.

She was waiting for an answer, eyebrows raised. What did she expect him to say? “She overstepped,” he said, unable to keep the mutinous bite from his voice. “There is only one person who I will abide in touching me, and it is certainly not Anika.” 

Inej lightly scraped her fingernails over the nape of his neck, soothing him. His eyes fell closed, tingles skittering in rivulets down his spine, his arms, racing down the back of his legs. “Only one?” Her voice brushed against his chin, seeping in through the hazy warmth spreading through his body.

He hummed in response, leaning forwards to press his face into the crook of her neck. He wanted the party to be over and for them to be alone—just the two of them in the whole wide world, no reputation to maintain, no gang to run, no slavers to hunt. Him and Inej, wrapped in the circle of one another’s arms.

“Only you. Only ever you,” he said against her skin, hugging her closer. “Are you bothered by that?”

Inej smoothed her hands down his neck, coming to rest with her palms splayed wide across his shoulder blades. He could feel the gentle vibration of her voice as she said, quite simply, “No. It doesn’t bother me.”

He didn’t know he’d been holding tension in his shoulders until it suddenly unwound, leaking out into the night air. It had only ever been her. It would only ever be her.

He knew he’d have to let her go, someday. She needed to return to _The Wraith_ and purge the True Sea of slavers, but berth twenty-two would always be waiting for her when she returned, as would he. For now, he was content to let the music fade into nothingness, his world narrowing to the feel of her arms around him, his face pressed to her neck, breathing in her cardamom scent. ‘Someday’ was not today. He still had time with her, yet.

**FIN**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! ^^


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